Yelp Trust & Safety Report 2020

February 25, 2021 | trust.yelp.com Contents

> Prioritizing Integrity and Quality of Content on Yelp 3 Introduction How Yelp Maintains Content Integrity Competitor Analysis By the Numbers: Yelp’s Year at a Glance

> Alerting Consumers to Potential Misinformation 8 Introduction Incidents We Alerted Against Media-fueled Alerts Suspicious Review Activity Alert Compensated Activity Alert Questionable Legal Threats Alert

> Providing Critical COVID-19 Health and Safety Information 12 Introduction Updated Information During COVID-19

> Creating a Fair System to Maintain Content Integrity and 13 Protect Consumers from Being Misled Yelp’s Recommendation Software Weeding Out Fake Business Pages

> A Track Record of Putting Consumer Trust and Safety First 15 Investigating and Thwarting Deceptive Efforts Accurately Categorizing Businesses

> Conclusion 16

2 Yelp Trust & Safety Report Prioritizing Integrity and Quality of Content on Yelp Introduction Yelp’s mission is to connect people with great local businesses. Providing access to reliable and useful information to help inform consumers’ spending decisions is critical to that mission. Our users’ trust is our top priority, which is why we take industry- 224M+ leading measures to maintain the integrity and quality of content on our platform, while review contributions are on the Yelp platform as of leveling the playing field for hard working business owners who rightfully earn their December 31, 2020 since our * great reputation. inception (2004) .

With more than 224 million reviews contributed since our inception* and hundreds of millions of photos, Yelp has become the go-to source for information on local businesses of any Star Rating Distribution size, across any category, as the reviews and ratings on Yelp since Yelp's inception, as of December 31, 2020* are generally a good predictor of what consumers can expect at the business. As of December 31, our all-time most reviewed businesses by category include home and local services (18%), restaurants (18%), and shopping (16%)*. The vast majority of reviews are positive — more than half of all Yelp reviews are five stars (51%)*, with about 76% of all reviews over three stars*.

Fake reviews and deceptive behavior are common across the web, which is why we’ve prioritized combating fraudulent conduct since 2005. Unlike other platforms that may have only recently started more seriously policing content in the current age of misinformation, this is something we invested in early on, built our platform around, and established systems and processes that were designed to scale over time. We prioritize identifying and thwarting suspicious or unhelpful behaviors — including attempts at consumer deception, competitor sabotage and vigilante activity in response to recent news events, and more. In fact, industry pundits, the media, and regulators consistently find that Yelp is one of the most aggressive and successful at identifying and weeding out unreliable reviews.

Share of Business Reviews by Category since Yelp’s inception, as of December 31, 2020*

* Data is sourced globally. 3 Yelp Trust & Safety Report Additionally, in 2020, FTC Economist, Devesh Raval, found * Yelp’s review ratings tend to be evenly distributed, whereas Distribution of Average Business Ratings Across Select Review Platforms other platforms have a skewed rating distribution that favors higher star ratings. According to Raval’s research, HomeAdvisor the average Yelp review contains nearly 600 characters, Facebook whereas 45% of Google reviews contain less than 100 characters, nearly half of which are no-text reviews. The study also finds that the difference between Google and BBB Yelp ratings of low quality businesses stems from Yelp Google

filtering questionable reviews into a separate section of a Yelp business page, which doesn’t impact a business’s overall star rating. The researcher also states, “...at least about a quarter of Google reviews for low quality businesses are

likely fake.” * Source: Devesh Raval, Federal Trade Commission. September 2020

How Yelp Maintains Content Integrity At Yelp, we invest in both technology and human moderation to address and mitigate misinformation on our platform.

1 We use automated software systems as our first line of defense. We’ve developed Trust and Safety software systems that analyze hundreds of signals — from reviews, businesses, and reviewers — in an effort to recommend the most reliable and useful reviews. Our automated recommendation software detects and mitigates less trustworthy and unreliable activity, helping us to mitigate misinformation at scale. We also have an automated system that alerts us of unusual spikes in user activity on a business’s Yelp page that might be driven by a recent media story.

2 We empower our community to serve as an additional layer of oversight. We provide easy ways for our community of users and business owners to flag content that violates our guidelines, respond to reviews and update business information.

3 Our teams of human moderators investigate content and platform activity. When content is reported to be in violation of our policies, our team manually investigates each complaint and takes appropriate action in response. We also publish Consumer Alerts on business pages to warn consumers when we learn about egregious attempts to manipulate ratings and reviews.

4 We encourage authentic content from the start of the user experience. For example, we encourage users to complete public profiles to share information about themselves, and have developed the Yelp Elite Squad to provide recognition to users who are active in the Yelp community and consistently contribute high quality content. Yelp has always been a community- driven review platform — not a place for one-off rants.

4 Yelp Trust & Safety Report The extra measures we take to preserve content quality and integrity on our platform serve to benefit both businesses and consumers, and go beyond what you’ll find on other review platforms.

Competitor Analysis

Content Policies Google Maps TripAdvisor HomeAdvisor OpenTable

Uses automated software to detect suspicious reviews Learn more about Yelp’s Learn more about Google’s Learn more about automated recommenda- automated detection TripAdvisor’s review fraud Information not publicly Information not publicly tion software systems. detection technology. available. available.

Consumers can see reviews the software identifies as potentially unreliable Learn more about Yelp’s not currently recommended Information not publicly Information not publicly review section. available. available.

Discourages review solicitation

Learn about why Yelp Learn more about Learn more about discourages businesses Learn more about Google’s TripAdvisor’s review HomeAdvisor’s review solici- Information not publicly from asking for reviews. review solicitation policy. solicitation policy. tation policy. available.

Alerts consumers of suspicious activity on business pages Learn more about how Learn more about Yelp’s Information not publicly TripAdvisor alerts against Information not publicly Information not publicly Consumer Alerts program. available. fraudulent reviews. available. available.

Alerts consumers of an influx of media- fueled reviews on business pages Learn more about Yelp’s policy on media-fueled . Information not publicly Information not publicly Information not publicly reviews as part of their available. available. available. Consumer Alerts program.

Trusted Content

Displays restaurant health inspection scores Not applicable. Learn more about how Yelp displays data from local health departments.

Displays COVID-19 health and safety measures Learn more about how Yelp allows businesses to update Learn more about Google’s Learn more about how Learn more about how their health and safety health and safety measures Tripadvisor allows busi- Opentable allows practices, and includes user for food, retail and hotels. nesses to display safety businesses to indicate their feedback. measures they are taking. safety precautions.

Allows businesses to display if they are minority- or women- owned Yelp allows businesses to self-identify as wom- Google allows businesses to en-owned, Black-owned, identify as Black-owned and and Latinx-owned. women-led.

5 Yelp Trust & Safety Report By the Numbers: Yelp’s Year at a Glance All metrics calculated between January 1, 2020 through December 31, 2020 unless otherwise noted*†

Yelp’s Recommendation Software Yelp’s automated recommendation software regularly evaluates Recommended Review Distribution all reviews on our platform, generally on a daily basis. Most since Yelp’s inception, as of December 31, 2020* reviews are recommended and appear in the “recommended reviews” section of Yelp business pages. Reviews that the Not Recommended 22% software determines to be less reliable and useful — for example, reviews that may be solicited, come from an unfairly biased source (like a business owner or employee) or are written by users we just don’t know enough about — are moved Removed for to a ‘not currently recommended’ section and do not factor Violating Yelp's in to Yelp’s overall star ratings. This separate section is still Policies visible to consumers and can be found through a link below 8% the recommended reviews. As the recommendation software Recommended is constantly learning and evaluating hundreds of signals, 70% reviews can move back and forth between the ‘not currently recommended' section, and the recommended section, over time.

Between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2020:

† > 12,850,000+ of contributed reviews were recommended (71%) † > 4,600,000+ of contributed reviews were not recommended because our 18,100,000+ recommendation software suspected the reviews were a conflict of interest, fake, reviews less useful, solicited, or otherwise less reliable (25%) were contributed to Yelp in 2020†. † > 710,000+ of contributed reviews were removed for violating Yelp’s policies (4%)

Breakdown of Contributed Reviews in 2020†

Not Recommended Removed for Violating Recommended Reviews Yelp's Policies Reviews 12.8m+ 710K+ 4.6m+

* Data is sourced globally and reflects all reviews since Yelp’s inception. † Data is sourced gloablly and reflects reviews from Jan. 1, 2020–Dec. 31, 2020 6 Yelp Trust & Safety Report *†‡

Human Content Moderation at Yelp Yelp’s User Operations team is on the frontlines of protecting data quality, investigating potential fraud, and moderating content.

Types of Contributions Removed for Violating Yelp's Policies in 2020†

In 2020, we implemented special COVID-19 content guidelines to protect local businesses from reputational harm related to the extraordinary circumstances of the pandemic.

Our COVID-19 content guidelines prohibit certain review content, including:

> Claims that someone contracted COVID-19 from a business or its employees > Criticism about a business being closed during what would have been their regular 5,200+ open hours before the pandemic reviews were removed by Yelp’s User Criticism of the safety measures a business is taking (for example, requiring that > Operations team for violating customers wear masks) our COVID-19 content guidelines Pandemic-related complaints about issues that are out of a business’s control, such as between March 1 and December 31, > 2020‡. mandatory government regulations

Protecting Business Owners and Consumers from Harmful Content It’s critical that Yelp is a safe and welcoming place for everyone, which is why we prioritize 13,300+ efforts to protect businesses from hateful content that might appear on their Yelp business reviews pages. were removed for threats, lewdness, hate speech, or other similarly To thwart potential abuse of the Yelp platform, our systems help detect unusual or harmful content‡ between May 25, suspicious activity. This sometimes triggers an investigation to verify that reviews describe 2020 and December 31, 2020. first-hand experiences and do not contain hateful content, in order to maintain the integrity of reviews on business pages.

While the vast majority of business pages submitted to Yelp are legitimate, in a small number of cases malicious actors attempt to create fake business pages in an effort to deceive unwitting consumers. Our teams work continuously to detect these activities to 100,000+ protect consumers from potential scams. user accounts closed due to suspicious, fraudulent, or abusive behavior†.

* Data is sourced from the U.S., Canada, and Australia. † Data is sourced globally. 7 ‡ Data is sourced from the U.S. only. Yelp Trust & Safety Report Alerting Consumers to Potential Misinformation Introduction Yelp is committed to providing consumers with trustworthy, “Yelp has one of the most aggressive review-monitoring reliable and relevant information to help them decide where systems. Consumer alerts pop up on some business’s to spend their money, as well as leveling the playing field for pages warning customers that the venue may be businesses. In 2012, we introduced our Consumer Alerts program engaging in review manipulation, based on suspicious to warn consumers when we find evidence of extreme attempts activity.” — The Wall Street Journal, 2019 to manipulate a business’s ratings and reviews. Since then, we’ve expanded the program over the years to include other egregious tactics that may harm consumers and unfairly put other businesses at a disadvantage. When we issue a Consumer Alert, a warning message pops up over the review section of that business’s Yelp page informing consumers about the violation of our policies with a link to view evidence we collected when available.*†‡

Distribution of Consumer Alerts on Yelp in 2020*

* Data reflects consumer alerts from Jan. 1, 2020–Dec. 31, 2020. Percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding. † Data is sourced globally. ‡ Data is soruced from the U.S. only.

8 Yelp Trust & Safety Report Incidents We Alerted Against Media-fueled Alerts When a business receives increased public attention, people often come to the business’s Yelp page to express their views. However, for Yelp to remain a useful resource to the community, reviews must be based on genuine, first hand experiences. 206% When we see media-fueled reviews, our User Operations team may temporarily disable increase in media- the posting of content to the page and publish an alert as they investigate the content fueled incidents (even if that means disabling the ability for users to express points of view we might on Yelp in 2020 compared to the same time in 2019* ­— making our agree with). When we’ve seen activity dramatically decrease or stop, our moderators media-fueled alerts 2020's most will clean up the page so only reviews describing first-hand consumer experiences are common type of Consumer Alert. reflected. Alerts can appear for days or several weeks; the duration is determined on a case-by-case basis.

> Unusual Activity Alerts: We publish Unusual Activity Alerts when a business receives an influx of Yelp reviews that were motivated by a recent news event or social media post rather than actual consumer experiences with the business. 850+ Unusual Activity > Public Attention Alert: Last summer, in response to our nation’s reckoning with systemic racism, we updated how we approach media-fueled reviews for incidents Alerts related to racism. In September 2020, we released a Public Attention Alert to inform were placed on business pages in 2020*, resulting in Yelp’s User consumers when a business receives and influx of Yelp reviews related to the Operations team removing more business gaining public attention for either being accused of, or the target of, racist than 105,000 reviews associated * behavior. with media-fueled activity .

> Business Accused of Racism Alert: When our User Operations finds resounding evidence of egregious, racist actions from a business owner or employee — such as using overtly racist slurs or symbols — we will escalate the Public Attention Alert to 550 a Business Accused of Racism Alert. This alert will always link to a news article from Public Attention Alerts a credible media outlet so users can learn more about the situation. Incidents that were published on business pages that were either accused of, or the warrant this escalated alert are extremely rare. Out of the many millions of business target of, racist behavior* between pages on Yelp, as of December 2020 only two businesses have ever received this May 25, 2020 through December alert*. Incidents where public corrective action was taken, such as an apology or the 31, 2020. This includes actions in response to the Black Lives Matter termination of an offending employee, would not warrant a Business Accused of movement. Racist Behavior Alert.

* Data is sourced from the U.S. only. 9 Yelp Trust & Safety Report Suspicious Review Activity Alert

This alert informs consumers of instances where we uncover a disproportionate number of positive reviews stemming from the same IP address. In January 2020, we expanded this alert to also include instances where we uncover a possible connection to 699 a deceptive review ring. Historically, this has been our most common type of alert, but Suspicious Review media-fueled alerts dominated our Consumer Alert program in 2020. Activity Alerts were placed on business pages in Business pages do not receive this alert simply because customers left reviews while 2020*. using the business’s WiFi (a common misconception). Our team is instead looking for the relatively rare instances where many positive reviews appear to come from a single IP address in a way that shows a concerted effort to inflate a business’s overall star rating 1,200+ on Yelp. This is a tactic we see more often in Home and Local Services, Restaurants and user accounts closed Automotive business categories*. If the offending behavior stops, then these alerts are for being associated with review rings since launching the updated generally removed after 90 days. Suspicious Review Activity Alert in January*.

Suspicious Review Activity Alerts, 2020*

Inordinate Number of Reviews Businesses with Potential Connections Coming from the Same IP Address to Deceptive Review Rings 335 364

* Data is sourced globally. 10 Yelp Trust & Safety Report Compensated Activity Alert

We place this type of alert when someone is caught purchasing or incentivizing people for new or updated reviews, or offering compensation to remove or prevent critical reviews. We primarily rely on our community of users to report evidence to us, and 457 Compensated after a thorough investigation by our User Operations team we may publish this alert on a business page if the situation warrants it. Consumers deserve to know if someone Activity Alerts were placed on business pages in may be unfairly gaining positive reviews or removing critical ones. Some businesses 2020‡. even try to purchase a more favorable rating through cash or other incentives without disclosing they are doing so, a deceptive tactic that violates Federal Trade Commission Compensated Activity Alerts on Yelp, regulations. 2019 vs 2020† Some of the most common categories that receive these types of alerts are businesses in the Restaurants, Home and Local Services, and Food categories*. If the offending behavior stops, then these alerts are generally removed after 90 days.†

Questionable Legal Threats Alert‡

When we receive evidence of a dubious legal threat against a reviewer or a business using a contractual gag clause to prevent critical reviews, we’ll issue this alert to warn others that the business may be attempting to abuse the legal system to suppress 16 criticism. This alert is removed on a case-by-case basis. Questionable Legal

We regularly engage in advocacy work to protect the First Amendment rights of Threat Alerts were placed on business pages in consumers. For example, in 2016 we supported the passage of the Consumer Review ‡ 2020 . Fairness Act, a federal law that prohibits the inclusion of gag clauses preventing online reviews in consumer form contracts.

Most Common Business Categories on Yelp that Received Questionable Legal Threat Alerts, 2020 ‡

Learn more about Yelp’s Consumer Alerts program at https://trust.yelp.com/consumer-alerts/.

* Data is sourced globally. † Data is sourced globally and reflects alerts from Jan. 1, 2019–Dec. 31, 2020. ‡ Data is sourced from the U.S. only and reflects alerts from Jan. 1, 2020–Dec. 31, 2020. 11 Yelp Trust & Safety Report Providing Critical COVID-19 Health and Safety Information Introduction Throughout the pandemic we’ve prioritized building new product features to help businesses and consumers stay connected and communicate important information. Through a new COVID-19 business updates section we provided business owners with 285,000 options to communicate how they’ve updated their operations — from offering curbside business pages pickup or virtual consultation services, to the health and safety precautions they are updated proactively by our moderators to taking. Beginning in January 2021, we began displaying user generated feedback on if a provide more accurate information user observed, or did not observe, the enforcement of social distancing or staff wearing during the pandemic — whether it masks at local businesses. was updating hours of operation or publicized health and safety measures. Updated Information During COVID-19 We’ve seen hundreds of thousands of businesses take advantage of the COVID-19 Updates section on their Yelp business page.* †

This new section also features a timestamp to show when a business’s hours of operation or customized message was last updated. We also proactively updated business pages with important COVID-19 related information based on publicly available sources, including businesses’ websites and social media pages.

> 1,500,000+ business pages reflected new > 450,000+ businesses created a custom operating hours* message for customers on their Yelp business page* > 505,000+ business pages reflected virtual * services offered (such as consultations, > 745,000+ business pages reflect health classes and tours) and safety precautions implemented at the business* (about half of these came directly from the business owner)

Common Health and Safety Measures Reflected on Yelp Business Pages† as of December 31, 2020

* Data is sourced from the U.S. and Canada. † Data is sourced from the U.S. and Canada and reflect business precautions as of Dec. 31 2020. Percentage distribution only includes businesses that have at least one health and safety measure indicated. 12 Yelp Trust & Safety Report Creating a Fair System to Maintain Content Integrity and Protect Consumers from Being Misled Yelp’s Recommendation Software* It’s important to create a level playing field for all businesses on Yelp. If a business could give themselves five star reviews or their competitors one star reviews, it would be misleading to consumers and unfair to other businesses. Below are some of the types 4,600,000 of reviews that our recommendation software is designed to detect and consider less reviews were not reliable or trustworthy: recommended automatically by our > Conflict of Interest: Includes reviews that it suspects may be written by those with recommendation software as of undisclosed ties to a business, including competitors, disgruntled employees, friends December 31, 2020, for all reviews contributed in 2020*. or family.

> Solicited: When it suspects someone associated with a business requested the review. Solicited reviews can create a positive bias that is unfair to other businesses. When asked to write a review by a business, a customer may feel pressure to give the business a higher star rating compared to someone who was inspired to write a review on their own. Businesses also tend to only ask for reviews from customers they know will give them a great rating— at scale, solicited reviews could make review platforms less helpful to all consumers.

> Less Useful: Includes rants and raves and otherwise unhelpful information for the community.

> Less Reliable: Reviews written by less active users that we don’t know enough about to recommend their opinion to our community. These could also be reviews coming from sources where we detect suspicious behavior, such as when a disproportionate amount of reviews come from the same IP address.

When co-founder and CEO Jeremy Stoppelman started Yelp, he invested in engineering efforts to surface the highest quality and most reliable content to consumers. Coming from PayPal, he saw the challenges that came with thwarting fraudsters and scammers on a regular basis. Realizing some people may also try to game Yelp’s review system, he prioritized putting scalable systems in place to mitigate misinformation on the platform.

Yelp’s Trust and Safety team is focused on building and maintaining systems, including Yelp’s automated recommendation software, that protect the integrity of the consumer and business owner experience on Yelp. This team is primarily composed of seasoned engineers, including PhDs in areas like computer science or “[Yelp] also surfaces reviews algorithmically via recommendation mathematics that have to sign special NDAs to software. It segregates reviews that the software flags for being minimize the risk that others, even internally solicited or biased, or because it doesn’t know enough about a user... at Yelp, might learn how to game Yelp's [The review filter] has also led to a rash of false conspiracy theories recommendation software (covered previously by BuzzFeed News) that the company takes down good reviews in order to get businesses to buy ads. It also means Yelp leaves money on the table — it could easily juice engagement and user numbers if it took a less aggressive approach to policing content. But here’s the thing: It works.” — BuzzFeed News, 2019

* Data is sourced globally. 13 Yelp Trust & Safety Report At Yelp, we take fairness and integrity very “Yelp presented substantial evidence of the constant human and seriously. That’s why no employee has the technological efforts made by Yelp employees, including engineers, ability to override our software to recommend to ensure that real people with established profiles are writing the or not recommend any business’s reviews — top reviews, and that business owners and employees are not writing even the engineers who built the algorithm their own biased or inaccurate reviews of their businesses or the cannot manually change the recommendation businesses of their competitors. Consequently, the evidence at trial status of reviews for a particular business. did not support the claim that Yelp was not always working to give Additionally, there’s never been any amount consumers the most trustworthy and unbiased reviews.” of money a business can pay Yelp to alter their reviews or ratings, as reviews for Yelp — Superior Court of California in Demetriades v. Yelp case, 2019 advertisers and non-advertisers are treated exactly the same. Accusations to the contrary have been repeatedly investigated and rejected over the years by government agencies, in multiple courtrooms, by independent scholarly studies and even in the media.

Learn more about Yelp’s recommendation software at https://trust.yelp.com/recommendation- software/.

Weeding Out Fake Business Pages Although rare, people sometimes try to set up fake business pages on Yelp. These “lead generators” and other bad actors attempt to create several business pages, take the leads generated and auction them to unlicensed contractors, who may then trick consumers into paying exorbitant amounts for their services. These fake businesses are often found in categories like Locksmiths and Appliance Repair, which are also categories where consumers may be most vulnerable because they require entry into their own home.

Yelp’s User Operations team works to block these bad actors from joining the Yelp platform in the first place. A specialized team monitors when a new business page is submitted to Yelp. By evaluating user- generated content, leveraging detailed first-person research, and even calling the business directly, they focus on catching these fake businesses and blocking or removing them from Yelp.

14 Yelp Trust & Safety Report A Track Record of Putting Consumer Trust and Safety First Investigating and Thwarting Deceptive Efforts In late 2019, we worked with a third-party to evaluate how the fraudulent review industry in the U.S. values Yelp reviews online and on dark web marketplaces. Most notably, there’s been a decline in providers offering to place fraudulent Yelp reviews, 35 of 36 likely due to Yelp’s extensive Trust and Safety measures, like our recommendation fraudulent review software, that make it more difficult for vendors to guarantee results. The research vendors were found that many veteran review vendors preferred to publish paid reviews on other caught through an platforms, claiming Yelp’s infrastructure has made it difficult to have Yelp recommend investigation their deceptive reviews. Some illicit review sellers even insisted that clients seeking Yelp The reviews posted were identified as untrustworthy by Yelp’s automated reviews pay significantly more, to make up for the increased effort in trying to generate recommendation software within fake reviews that can get past Yelp’s automated systems. four days (or 97%) and were not recommended (Investigation Reputation management companies that claim to help businesses get more positive conducted in September 2019) reviews and improve their ratings are constantly evolving their tactics in an effort to deceive consumers. This is why we conduct investigations to thwart these efforts, and keep our platform fair for businesses that play by the rules. Google, on the other hand, profits from these efforts – a Google search for “get more 5 star reviews” will surface several ads for these types of companies.

Accurately Categorizing Businesses We’ll occasionally uncover wide-scale attempts to mislead consumers, simply by categorizing their business as something they’re not. We proactively moderate this type of behavior and take action by manually recategorizing businesses to help consumers find the services and businesses they’re looking for, and mitigate efforts to misinform.

In the summer of 2018, after learning that some crisis and faith-based * pregnancy centers were misleading people seeking out abortion care — a Screenshot taken on November 24, 2020 critical medical procedure and sensitive topic — our User Operations team manually investigated more than 2,000 business listings to verify that our platform was accurately representing the services these clinics offered*. Yelp regularly audits business information, so when we found that a clinic did not offer actual abortion services, they were re-categorized as either “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” or “Faith-based Crisis Pregnancy Centers.” 2,000 businesses recategorized “Yelp made a concerted effort last summer to ensure the business review by Yelp’s moderators for misleading women to believe they offered site was delivering accurate results when people turn to its platform to find abortion services when they were in abortion care. Google, meanwhile, struggles to explain why it directs those fact faith-based, anti-abortion or pro-life health clinics. seeking abortion services to clinics that offer misinformation about abortion and don’t offer the service.” — Rewire News Group, 2019

* Data is sourced from the U.S. only. 15 Yelp Trust & Safety Report Conclusion While looking for the best pizza place near you may be important for your Friday night dinner, every day people are making critical and sometimes sensitive searches on Yelp – whether they’re looking for locksmiths after accidentally getting locked out of their homes, local mechanics to help them get to work on time, or in search of the best pediatricians or mental health specialists in their neighborhoods. When consumers need to make important decisions about which local business may best suit their needs, it’s critical that they can trust the reviews they read on Yelp to reflect real customer experiences. That’s why Yelp has spent over a decade developing technology and policies to cultivate helpful and reliable content on our platform.

For some business owners, managing an online presence may seem intimidating and, at times, overwhelming. At Yelp, we work to make the process as easy, intuitive and seamless as possible. Over the years, we’ve introduced a number of free products and features to streamline the management of a Yelp business page. And behind the scenes, we’ve been protecting local businesses for more than a decade by making sure the businesses with the most resources or marketing dollars can’t manipulate their reviews to put their competitors at a disadvantage, and by mitigating misinformation attempts from malicious actors who try to game our system. For more information on how to navigate the Yelp platform like a pro, business owners can learn more by reading our Business Blog.

16 Yelp Trust & Safety Report Trust & Safety Report 2020 For media inquiry, email [email protected].